Wider inquiry sought on police

Amid mounting suspicion that police officers in South Carolina attempted to cover up the circumstances of the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, civil rights leaders are urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate all fatal shootings by police in Charleston County in the last two decades.

Activists from three civil rights groups contend there is a long history of suspicious cases of black men dying at the hands of the police.

Allegations by black residents of police profiling and excessive force went unheeded, they said. Then a cellphone video surfaced showing Walter L. Scott, 50, an unarmed African American, being fatally shot by white police Officer Michael T. Slager on April 4.